


half chances

by mimesere



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cooking, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27835609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimesere/pseuds/mimesere
Summary: There haven’t been a lot of good days since Hamid and the others came back from Rome.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	half chances

Hamid sets the camera up out of Zolf’s way and hopes that it’s unobtrusive enough to keep Zolf from feeling uncomfortable. He makes sure to get a view of the prep area and the windows looking out over the scrap of beach, pouring light over the galley-sized kitchen. He’s pretty certain the tests he did mean that all that light won’t blow things out, because it’s the second best part of being allowed in Zolf’s kitchen.

The best part is, in Hamid’s extremely educated opinion, the food. Obviously. 

On a good day, the ranking changes and the company rockets to the top of the list even if Hamid and Zolf have never been as naturally easy with each other as they are with other people. On a good day, Zolf can be cajoled into talking about the latest novels he’s read and he’ll argue good naturedly with Hamid over the literary merits of genre fiction or he’ll go on about whatever cookbook he’s working his way through or what technique’s caught his imagination. On a good day, he moves around his kitchen as lightly as he’s capable of and will talk about some of the weirder things he’s had to heal or the places he’s been, full of sharp observations on people and anatomy.

There haven’t been a lot of good days since Hamid and the others came back from Rome. 

It had taken Sasha and Grizzop both looking to find Zolf at all, in a tiny battered house on the beach. It had taken all of Hamid’s talking and Sasha’s careful offer to get them all out of there if Zolf wanted to get him to step aside, leaning heavily on a cane and accompanied by the almost silent tick of gears moving inside the legs that had replaced the magic ones they’d last seen.

Zolf had set aside his vestments, those dark austere things threaded through with the gold that marked him out as one of the Meritocrats’ people. Hamid had never seen him in them, not in the whole time they’d been working together, but he’d known Zolf had them, shoved somewhere in the back of his wardrobe in favor of the practical casual layers that he’d preferred while working. 

The white hair had been a shock. 

The shirt, splashed over with flowers in an array of bright colors, spades in black and green twining around and through them like leaves, had been more of one.

Hamid hadn’t known how to ask about any of it. He still doesn’t.

Hamid routinely ignores the rifle leaning against the wall near the door, damascened and gorgeous, the inlay gleaming with the faint shimmer of magic. Hamid also ignores the people who stop by for healing or a hot meal or...whatever. There’s usually something bright around them too, a shirt like Zolf’s or the leatherwork on a shoulder holster or inside the pleats of a skirt. If he looks closely enough, he’s sure he’d see other markers too. A heart, a diamond, a club. More spades. 

“Harlequins,” Grizzop had said and mostly made himself scarce, picking up jobs around the city. “Can’t hunt what I don’t know about,” he’d offered as an explanation. Hamid thinks they’ve worked something out between them, because he knows Grizzop’s directed people Zolf’s way when they need help Grizzop can’t give. 

Sasha’s practically moved in with Zolf and if Hamid’s a little stung by the idea that she’d prefer Zolf’s worn asceticism to living to the luxury of the Tahan compound, he tries to remind himself that it doesn’t matter. She’s not leaving him behind. Grizzop’s not leaving when he ranges between the temple of Artemis and Hamid and Zolf’s. Azu splits her time between the temple of Aphrodite and the Tahans and Hamid tries very hard not to call it coming home. He wants all his friends to stay with him, where he can know where they are and that they’re safe and taken care of and getting all the things they deserve. 

He can’t have that, so he makes himself a second home with Zolf and Sasha, watching all the people coming and going while Zolf grumbles at him, at Sasha, at everyone who walks through his door looking for whatever he can give them. They leave behind gifts of medicines and foods, clothes and weapons, anything Zolf might need or pass along. Sometimes they leave money. 

Zolf won’t take money from Hamid. 

So, Hamid works around it by telling Zolf he needs help with a project. He tells Zolf that he has to contribute to the family somehow and he needs to prove out some of his ideas before his sister will buy in. He makes sure that it’s all true, because Zolf’s good at telling when people are lying, and something in him is warmed all the way through when Zolf looks at him for a few long moments and says, “Is this what you want? This thing for your family, do _you_ want it?”

Hamid nods. He’s not really sure what he’d say that wouldn’t put Zolf off the whole idea. 

“Yeah all right,” Zolf says finally. He scrubs a hand through the short hair at the back of his head. “I dunno how you’re going to turn all this into something people watch, but do your worst.”

And that’s how they’re here in Zolf’s kitchen while Hamid sets up a camera and fusses over lighting and offers to prestidigitate Zolf into something a little more striking, which Zolf turns down firmly. 

Zolf starts his prep work, cleaning vegetables and rummaging through his cabinets in search of spices. Zolf says nothing the whole time. 

“Zoooooooolf.” Hamid puts his head down onto his folded arms and laughs. 

“What?” asks Zolf, looking up from where he’s methodically chopping through an onion. 

“You’re supposed to talk during all this.”

Zolf frowns at Hamid. “About what?”

“What you’re doing?”

“They can see what I’m doing, Hamid. You’ve got a camera pointed at me and people’ve got eyes.”

Hamid lifts his head, propping his chin on his hand. “What’s the onion for?”

Zolf shrugs. “Marinade for the chicken.”

Hamid sighs. “And what _else_ is in that?” 

Zolf points the knife at the rest of the ingredients on the counter nearby. It’s steady in his hand and looks wickedly sharp. 

Sasha’s been replacing all of Zolf’s old knives -- “the edge on them, Hamid! Disgraceful!” -- with ones she’s obtained from Hamid doesn’t ask where. They seem like the right shape? Hamid doesn’t know enough about knives to tell if it’s actually for cooking or if Zolf is making do.

There’s saffron and turmeric in what looks like mismatched tea saucers next to parsley and cilantro drying off on a small towel. A knob of ginger sits next to an open jar of olives. There’s garlic already in the bowl that Zolf’s been dumping the onions into. 

“And what else have you got here?” Hamid grabs a second camera and uses it to pan across the assortment of spices Zolf’s pulled out. He lingers on the jar of preserved lemons without thinking about it. “You didn’t have those before.”

“Azu asked your kitchen for them,” says Zolf, back to dicing. “Brought ‘em by yesterday.”

“She didn’t say.” 

Zolf makes a wordless noise that manages to convey that what Azu does or does not tell Hamid is none of Zolf’s business. 

Did he accept them because Azu brought them or because it’s only a piece of what he needed? Zolf’s pride is occasionally a trial to Hamid. .

Hamid sets the thought aside in favor of shamelessly prying into the rest of Zolf’s preparations while his stomach rumbles happily. He reaches out, grabbing one of the olives and pulling back before Zolf can do more than scowl at him. “What are you making?”

“None of that now,” says Zolf. He grabs an olive himself before putting the lid back on. He nods toward the oven where a stone and tagine are waiting. ““I’m trying this chicken tagine business. Never used one of those before. Thought it’d be interesting to try it. Those lemons too.”

“Oh, I love that!” Hamid only just remembers to turn the second camera to face Zolf.

“Yeah,” says Zolf, looking pleased by Hamid’s enthusiasm. “Sasha does too.”

A good day, then. Hamid sets the other camera aside and sets about asking questions to keep Zolf talking through most of the prep work. Zolf is distressingly good at dismembering a chicken. 

It takes hours. There’s marinating the chicken while Zolf finishes the rest of his chopping and peeling and things. He sets about making bread too. And then, finally, _finally_ \-- Hamid has been reduced to making pathetic noises at Zolf who is cruelly denying him food -- Zolf gets everything into the tagine and simmering. “That’ll take a bit,” he says.

“How long?” 

“I told you you could eat,” Zolf says heartlessly. “Two hours, give or take if I’ve got this right.”

Sasha wanders in, staying carefully out of frame. Zolf’s arranged for there to be bread and cheese and dried fruit where Sasha can get to it and she does. She brings some over to Hamid, who takes it gratefully. “All right, Hamid.”

“Hey Sasha.” 

“You got some visitors coming” she says to Zolf. “Three of ‘em. Couldn’t make them out from here, but they look like your lot.”

Zolf wipes his hands clean on the towel he’s slung over his shoulder. “They’re back early,” he says thoughtfully. 

“Should we go?” asks Hamid. He tries not to sound too anxious about it, but he thinks he misses when Zolf’s face softens. 

“No, you’d’ve met up with them again soon enough.”

Again? Hamid mouths the word at Sasha, who only shrugs and crams a huge bite of whatever she’s made into her mouth. 

Even so, Zolf shrugs his shirt back on over the vest he’d stripped down to cook in and grabs his cane. Hamid tries not to see it as putting on armor here in his own home. Zolf should feel safe here with them. Sasha’s frowning too and Hamid just barely catches the flicker of a knife in her hand. He very much wishes Azu and Grizzop were here too.

“It really is all right,” Zolf tells them and opens the door. 

Oscar Wilde stands on Zolf’s doorstep. Gone is the tailored suit Hamid remembers and the well styled hair. He looks disheveled and exhausted, a scar curving up the side of his face. He is strangely casual in jeans and a plain button down, and the tie loose around his neck echoes the bright flowers and spades Zolf’s adopted. Flanking him are--

“Howard Carter?” asks Sasha. “Did you break out of jail or were you let out?”

And “Commander Barnes?” Hamid squeaks out. 

“You’re not all dead,” says Wilde. He glances at Zolf, who gives him a small nod and the tension in Wilde’s shoulders relaxes a hair. “What a pleasant surprise.” He doesn’t sound pleased at all, more wary than anything else.

Zolf shrugs. “No way to let you know ahead of time. Anyway, soup’s on. Azu and Grizzop will be here later. We’ll all have a nice chat over dinner.” And with that, he turns back and heads toward the kitchen again. Carter and Barnes follow him, murmuring polite greetings in Barnes’ case and a low, “broke out,” from Carter as he passes by Sasha. 

“All right then,” Wilde says. He examines Hamid and Sasha closely, taking in all the changes of the last eighteen months. He offers them a small smile; it looks genuine, nothing at all like the bright mask of fine-ness that he’d given them months and months and months ago. “You look well.”

“What is _happening_?” Hamid bursts out. 

Wilde waves a hand at where Zolf’s banging around the kitchen. It’s noisier than he’s been all day and Hamid hopes, the tiniest bit hysterically, that he’s turned the cameras off before they catch Hamid shouting at everyone. “I suppose we’ll all find out at dinner.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look. Look. Sometimes a gifset crosses your dash and you are enthusiastically reminded that Verona Beach is the finest of all AU settings and then you smash it together with another piece of indulgent nonsense about Hamid and Zolf and cooking and you get something like this. Is it a mess? Yes. Do I care? No, because in my heart of hearts, the Harlequins wear Prada and the Meritocrats wear D&G and everything is Radiohead songs and neon lights and sun bleached beaches.


End file.
